1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus in which an image is formed with use of a belt-like member.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional technology related to this kind of image forming apparatus has been known in which image forming is performed by primarily transferring a toner image to an intermediate transferring belt and then secondarily transferring the toner image to a sheet (for example, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2003-316236). According to this conventional technology, an electrostatic latent image is formed on a surface of a photoconductive member in accordance with image data, and the latent image is developed for one color after another by a multi-color developing device, and the developed images are primarily transferred to an intermediate transferring belt. Then, toner images for respective colors are synthesized to be a single color toner image, and the color toner image is secondarily transferred from the intermediate transferring belt to a sheet.
Further, according to the conventional technology, a cleaning roller is provided in contact with the intermediate transferring belt, so that the cleaning roller cleans toners remaining on the intermediate transferring belt after the secondary transfer is performed.
The cleaning roller in the conventional technology normally extends in a width direction of the intermediate transferring belt, and it would be necessary that a cleaning width (a width along which the cleaning roller cleans a belt surface) of the cleaning roller covers an entire width of the intermediate transferring belt.
However, for example, when the arrangement of the cleaning roller in an image forming apparatus is limited, and a cleaning width is slightly smaller than an entire width of the intermediate transferring belt, toners cannot be removed by the cleaning roller if the toners are attached to or dispersed in portions out of the cleaning width. In this case, the toners remaining on the belt may undesirably mess up parts which are arranged in periphery of the cleaning roller.
It is considered that such problem can be solved by making the cleaning width be wider than the entire width of the intermediate transferring belt. However, it would be necessary to make a width of the cleaning roller itself be large, so that a problem that a width of a machine would also be large arises.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a technology of assuredly removing messes on the belt by using a simple mechanism without making respective widths of parts such as a cleaning roller to be large.